Author Archives: Gil Asakawa

DNC 2008 kicks off with Asian American summit, APIAVote Gala

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Here are DNC-related “tweets” from my Twitter feed, which shows up in my Facebook updates and also in a widget on my blog pages. Some videos, too: Above, emcee Tamlyn Tomita (“Joy Luck Club,” “Come See the Paradise,” “Picture Bride,” Karate Kid II”) introduces Mee Moua, the historic first-ever Hmong American lawmaker, a state senator from Minnesota, during the APIAVote Gala at the Marriott City Center.

The week began before the convention itself, with a Saturday night Media Kickoff Party that was the city’s show of excess to 15,000 journalists from around the world. I bet there were over 5,000 jrounalists, maybe 10,000, who attended the evening at Elitch Gardens amusement park. The admission was free, the rides were free, there was free food and drink everywhere, and even the arcade games were free, and the staff handed out stuffed animal prizes to anyone who played anything.

The next day, Sunday, was an Asian American Summit organized by a Denver committee, which featured speakers including Congressman Mike Honda. The session was a first step towards organizing Colorado’s AAPI (Asian American Pacific Islander, which I’ll try to use as my standard acronym when I’m not spelling out Asian American) community to participate in the political process. Monday night, the first night pof the convention, was the APIAVote Gala. Continue reading →

Part-Asian American Super Cr3w wins ‘Best Dance Crew’ title

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Super Cr3w, the Las Vegas-based group of b-boys that includes Asian Americans, has won the top honors for the second season of producer Randy Jackson wildly popular show, “America’s Best Dance Crew,” on MTV. Congrats to the six-man group.

We took a break from incessant Olympics viewing to watch the live MTV season finale program last night, and were holding our breath. An astounding 39 million votes were cast for these two finalists, a reflection of how huge the hip-hop dance culture has become.

We wanted the other finalists, SoReal Cru from Houston, because they’re all Asian Americans, two of the members are women, and one of the members said poignantly during the season premiere that their parents expected them to be lawyers and doctors but they wanted to pursue their passion for dancing. Continue reading →

Another Olympic team mocks Asian eyes in a photo

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Asian Americans (and Asians around the world) should be up in arms about this. Yet another “official” photo has been found, of an Olympic team posing with its members pulling back their eyes to make them slanted. This time it’s four members of the Argentine Women’s Soccer Team, mocking their Chinese hosts in a photo in a national sports magazine.

All these athletes claim the mockery is affectionate and that no offense was meant. So it calls in tho question a general cultural attitude — in Spanish-speaking countries? In Spain and Argentina? — that allows this kind of display as acceptable. Certainly, I don’t think any U.S. Olympic team would do this for a photo that’s going to be seen worldwide.

So maybe the U.S. is more evolved in racial attitudes than some other countries. I guess that’s good news….

Spanish athletes mock Chinese Olympic hosts in photos

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OK, I had to post these two photos, in which Spanish athletes mock Chinese by pulling back their eyes to make them slanty — ha ha ha.

The first is a posed shot of of the Spanish Olympic basketball team. It was used in an ad in a Spanish newspaper, which calls into question not only the photographer, athletes and team management’s judgment, but also the national newspaper’s staff and management. The second photo is of the Spanish tennis team, celebrating after defeating the Chinese to go on to the Fed Cup finals earlier this year.

Man, I haven’t seen that done since I was in grade school — in the mid-1960s, when the expression was “enhanced” by the person sticking out his (or her, apparently) buck teeth and speaking in a heavy, phony Asian accent, saying crap like “ah-so!” and “herro, I solly, no tickee no laundoree.”

You’d think we’d moved past that kind of third-grade cruelty by now, but nope. Not in Spain, anyway.

What were they thinking? Are racial mocking stereotypes acceptable in Spain where they’re frowned upon here? Do Chinese athletes go around finding ways to mock Spanish athletes?

These photos disgust me. Continue reading →

DenverPost.com’s DNC coverage and APAs at the convention

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Check out the widget above. What’s a widget?

Widgets are cool, portable little online features that you can put onto websites easily by just copying a little bit of code into your page. I’m helping to get the word out about The Denver Post‘s widget for coverage of the Democratic National Convention, coming up in a little over a week here in Denver.

It’s a simple way for sites to include syndicated content from outside sources, contained within a defined box or space. Think of all the different elements on a MyYahoo or iGoogle home page – those individual boxes of content are all widgets on the page.
Continue reading →